Of late I have seen a lot of articles on the talent myth recently – Peter Orzag in NYT and Malcolm Gladwell is convinced about it. Common premise of these is that hard work and practice is behind many successes and an overnight success is in fact someone who worked years perfecting the craft to reach that point.
Then saw this about Zuckerberg and I had read his profile in New Yorker. Here the argument is successful people were at right place at right time and they capitalized on it, sometimes by playing hardball. Commenter in NYT argues that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and even Einstein is successful not by originality, but by building on what others have done.
My take –
Innovations all need not be original ideas and in fact tracing originality of many ideas might be difficult anyway. Connecting things in a way that others did not imagine can be a great innovation. Also things which are very successful often are simple as well which makes it seem so obvious to people. But being so obvious and simple is the reason why it was successful in the first place.
Many successful people often cite luck as a big factor, but they did enough to create their own luck, to reach the right place at the right time. Hard work and practice is definitely the way, Talent helps a lot. I used to like the Accenture ad which showed Tiger Woods (so anything we believe could be proven wrong) swinging and the measurement says 50% attitude and 50% aptitude.
Then saw this about Zuckerberg and I had read his profile in New Yorker. Here the argument is successful people were at right place at right time and they capitalized on it, sometimes by playing hardball. Commenter in NYT argues that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and even Einstein is successful not by originality, but by building on what others have done.
My take –
Innovations all need not be original ideas and in fact tracing originality of many ideas might be difficult anyway. Connecting things in a way that others did not imagine can be a great innovation. Also things which are very successful often are simple as well which makes it seem so obvious to people. But being so obvious and simple is the reason why it was successful in the first place.
Many successful people often cite luck as a big factor, but they did enough to create their own luck, to reach the right place at the right time. Hard work and practice is definitely the way, Talent helps a lot. I used to like the Accenture ad which showed Tiger Woods (so anything we believe could be proven wrong) swinging and the measurement says 50% attitude and 50% aptitude.
No comments:
Post a Comment